Had an odd and disturbing experience yesterday. I am 42 years old and have been lifting off and on since I was 16.
My normal leg workouts consist of squats, deadlifts, Romanian deadlift, good mornings, glute ham raises, reverse hyper, and such. Not all in one workout, mind you, those are just my lifts I rotate through.
Anyways, I just started a German body comp routine, in which I do 6 squats, followed by 12 lunges, followed by 25 leg presses, with 10 seconds rest in between, then 2 minutes between sets.
During my second set on the leg press, I got a tremendous throbbing headache around the back portion of my head.
I thought that my head was going to explode.
During my third set, I changed the position of my feet, moving them lower so that they weren’t elevated so high above my head, and no further problems.
Anyone ever experience this before? What the heck is going on?
[quote]Paul222 wrote:
Had an odd and disturbing experience yesterday. I am 42 years old and have been lifting off and on since I was 16.
My normal leg workouts consist of squats, deadlifts, Romanian deadlift, good mornings, glute ham raises, reverse hyper, and such. Not all in one workout, mind you, those are just my lifts I.rotate through.
Anyways, I just started a German body comp routine, in which I do 6 squats, followed by 12 lunged, followed by 25 leg presses, with 10 seconds rest in between, then 2 minutes between sets.
During my second set on the leg press, I got a tremendous throbbing headache around the back portion of my head.
I thought that my head was going to explode.
During my third set, I changed the position of my feet, moving them lower so that they weren’t elevated so high above my head, and no further problems.
Anyone ever experience this before? What the heck is going on?
[/quote]
Blood that should be in your legs is going to your head when you strain. Your body thinks that since you’re using your legs your brain needs more juice. System works good with squats, not so good when you’re horizontal. Happens to me too.
Thanks, for a second I thought I was going to have a stroke!
Had the same thing happen today when doing incline presses, this is starting to concern me.
I slowed down the tempo of my lifts, and that helped a bit, but it still didn’t make it go away, and I’ve had a tremendous headache the rest of the day.
What gives? Am I restricted to low reps now?
I’ve done Olympic lifts in the past, and never had a problem with them, so I’m not sure if it’s the speed of the lifts, or just the number of total reps I’m doing in the giant sets?
As a person who suffers daily from headaches/migraines, I have numerous triggers outside of lifting. But certain workouts have triggered them.
For one thing, the strain you exert while doing a movement could tense the muscles around the neck leading to a constriction of blood flow. Vinpocetine has been known to help lifters with opening up the blood vessels.
Then there’s breathing: if the lifting is intense and you’re not breathing properly, it further constricts blood flow to the head, thus making it worse.
If you’re breathing properly, and don’t feel a headache caused by strain (best known as a tension headaches), then you might want to check with a chiropractor. Having a vertebrae or two out of place could be a significant factor, same with having a first rib out of place (after 6 chiropractic sessions in two weeks, I’ve had them popped back into place numerous times).
Hopefully this is somewhat helpful. Don’t let it deter you from lifting, but modifying your workout may be necessary.
Get your blood pressure checked.
Had it done in April, no problems with it.
[quote]Paul222 wrote:
Had it done in April, no problems with it.[/quote]
Your blood pressure changes by the minute sir.
The same thing happens to me with heavy high rep leg presses. I believe its a blood pressure thing. Getting 20-25 reps on heavy leg press requires extreme exertion. Which gradually builds pressure. To help, I’ve started doing them with more if a rest pause approach. 4-5 reps, take 2-3 deeps breaths, 4-5 reps, 2-3 breaths etc. Let’s the pressure go down a bit between, and I doubt it loses too much of the effectiveness of it. It is kind of scary though when it happens, like a vessel is gonna rupture and you’ll just die instantly, all in the name of acquiring trees for legs.
Google ‘exertional headache’ and/or ‘primary exertional headache’ and see if you think it fits.